Throw Down
by Perceived-nobility
Summary: Post-Avgengers: Tony Stark wakes to find that a certain God of Chaos has infiltrated his lab. He wakes again and the god has infiltrated his life.
1. Chapter 1

Tony Stark had been improbably, mildly inexplicably, and _actually_ asleep. In his white-walled, sparsely and squarely furnished, real bedroom. By himself. But then the air pressure changes and he is suddenly, startlingly, completely awake, as rigid in his bed as if someone's pointing a gun at him. Nobody is, but it takes him a couple seconds to process that fact. Then he works his jaw around until his ears pop, scrubs the sleep and panic from his face, and levers himself out of bed. Tony considers a night wasted if he doesn't spend any of it in the lab, and just because he'd collapsed, exhausted, into bed after an unexpected small-scale run-in with a couple Doombots doesn't mean he's given this night up for lost.

"Hey JARVIS? Why does the house have a destabilized cabin pressure? It's still attached to the Earth, yeah?"

"The foundations are firmly in place, sir. But there's been a power surge to the lab."

"Oh? Anything turn up on the video feeds?" Tony pads across the living room with its curtainless view of the beach and the sea and starts working his way down the stairs.

"No sir."

The stairs wind downward in a lazy counter-clockwise spiral. The original blueprints for the house had them run counter-clockwise, but this had changed as soon as Tony got his hands on the plans. A lot of other things had changed too—Tony had connected his workshop with a tunnel/driveway "like the bat-cave but cooler," he'd told the lead architect—but the most important were the stairs. Tony remembers reading somewhere that the staircases in old Army forts spiraled clockwise so that someone running up them had a wall behind his right arm while someone going down had ample space. Space that might be useful for, say, cocking and aiming a rifle. And while Tony hadn't been planning on battling anyone over his staircase at the time the house was built, he had felt that, as a weapons manufacturer, he should nod to the defense systems of the past. But since Tony's fortress (his lab) was at the bottom of the stairs rather than the top, he'd had them flipped around. Now, of course, that clockwise spiraling is loose enough that he can fly the Iron Man suit up and down the staircase if he needs to, and the space behind his right shoulder is great for lining up a punch.

"No change in thermals?" he asks JARVIS.

"None of the security measures have changed status, sir. And must you always question my competence?" He—Tony had stopped calling JARVIS an "it" right about the time that he first insulted Tony—sounds almost bored, and a little more British than usual.

"Forever and a day, sweetheart."

He stops just at the base of the stairs and peers through the glass walls of his lab. It's as dark as Tony had left it. The complex apparatuses he'd placed haphazardly across the benches cast complex shadows on the floor. They're lit only by the faint glow of the trophy case along the wall to the right, where Tony keeps every iteration of his suit behind (thick, heat-resistant, bulletproof) glass.

Tony lets the door to the lab scan his hand and his eye and his voice and steps through when it opens for him.

Probably the first thing he notices is the light. About half of the overhead lighting was on, just dim enough so that Tony doesn't have to squint against it. The second thing he notices is the tall, dark figure in the corner by his suits, facing him, pointing a prototype palm repulsor at his chest. The third is the chill in the room, which rolls over Tony's bare torso like icy, exploratory fingers.

"Pow," says the figure in a voice he recognizes.

"JARVIS, put everything on lockdown. Tightest you got. Code Alpha. Everything."

The figure smiles, a slow, creeping smirk that doesn't so much cross his face as ooze along it. "Anthony, do you really think your security can bat an eyelash at me?"

"It's Tony," Tony says tightly, "And I'm willing to maintain the illusion." He starts edging around the perimeter of the room towards his suits. "And speaking of, how'd you get in here anyway?"

"Magic." The figure wiggles his fingers suggestively. "I believe I used what you in Midgard call a 'glamour'?"

Tony raises an eyebrow. "Fairies use glamours, not Norse gods. Are you a fairy now, Reindeer Games?" He makes a show of eyeing the shiny gold and green tunic, the heavy leather coat. "With the way you dress, maybe. But for the record, I think it's stylish. Like you're wearing the interior of a castle or something."

Said Norse god does not appear to appreciate Tony comparing him to architecture. He flexes his fingers around the blaster and glowers. If Tony didn't make it a personal goal to be glowered at at least once a day, he might have wavered. As it is, he keeps edging towards his suits and fervently regrets wearing just boxers to bed. The suits chafe like a pumice pad on a herpes outbreak when Tony wears them without a body suit or clothes on.

For his part, Loki pivots so he faces Tony throughout his traverse across the room. He doesn't look particularly concerned that Tony is getting in range of some sort of defense against him, and Tony doesn't know whether to feel proud because of this or terrified. He settles on terrified as a feral, hungry grin twists Loki's face.

"What do you want?" Tony demands. It's one thing to meet Loki in the field of battle, out in the world where there's imminent and large-scale death and destruction going on. Because then it's Iron Man versus the God of Chaos, two forces battling each other for the sake of a multitude of lives. But Loki's in his _house_, in his _lab_, where the line blurs between Iron Man, flashy paragon of justice, and Tony, an inventor slowly approaching middle age who designs fancy glowing pacemakers and believes in things like duty and loyalty even when he looks around and sees that he doesn't—sometimes can't—offer those things to people who deserve them. He doesn't want Loki here _at all_, to say nothing of the fact that he'd thought Loki was busy getting a face full of Asgardian justice.

Loki brings his free hand around behind him and pulls out the glass case with Tony's first arc reactor in it. The one Pepper had given him to replace the one he'd broken to save his life. The one he keeps in his lab to remind himself that other people actually believe he's a decent person.

"This is what powers your creations, no?" Loki inquires, turning the case over in his hand. His fingers are lithe and dexterous, almost as sharp-looking as the corners of the glass.

"In case you forgot, Puck, I have a real issue with people taking my things."

Something flares in Loki, something that draws him taught and upright and a little forward, something that opens his face and Tony almost sees something there, something real, but Loki shuts himself down and whatever it is was only there for half a second and now it's hidden again.

"Oh I'm not here to steal it," Loki says. There's a crystalline crash as the case shatters in his palm and glittering shards of glass trickle to the floor. Loki palms the reactor, getting a feel for its contours. "I'm merely curious."

"Yeah? Well I'm mighty curious myself."

Tony has his back to the case of suits. He can deal with this. He still has on the bracelets for the Mark VII, which is stashed in a storage case to his right for repair. It's more banged up than he'd like and one of the repulsors doesn't work, but it'll do. But it would take a few seconds for the suit to assemble itself around him and he doubts Loki would give him that long. So instead of backing towards the cases of personalized weaponry behind him, Tony Stark moves forward. Loki watches him silently, still toying with the reactor. He strokes the cord attached to its base and tugs at the adaptor at the end. He looks regal and a little bit amused.

He looks shocked when Tony tackles him. They crash to the ground, Tony's head somewhere around Loki's midsection. Where Tony'd been expecting solid metal armor he finds something soft enough to be flesh, so he plants an elbow into what he hopes is Loki's solar plexus as he heaves himself up the god's body to grab at the reactor Loki still has clutched in his hands. The god wheezes gratifyingly, so Tony knows he's hit _something_. Then Loki's arms swing down from over his head and Tony feels something hard crash into the small of his back. Pain blossoms, taking root in tendrils of tingling numbness down his legs.

Shit.

Tony grasps above him and his fists tangle in dark hair. He pulls down as hard as he can, forcing Loki's head back. Then he frees his right hand and slams it into the underside of Loki's nose. He hears a crack and feels otherworldly cartilage splintering. The hands at his back loosen momentarily but are back with a vengeance as blood spouts from Loki's shattered nose. The god gurgles a roar as he flips Tony underneath him. Tony grabs for his arms and gets a foot between them, under Loki's belly. He knees up between Loki's legs with his other leg, missing his balls (unfortunately) but getting him tilted forward, and shoves mightily with his planted foot. The god goes flying, landing flat on his back on the workshop floor. The arc reactor rolls away under a table. Tony activates his bracelets and stands, shakily, with his arms out so the suit can build itself around him.

Loki raises one long arm and gestures. The busy clicks of interlocking metal stop abruptly. Tony stands stock still, half stuck in a partially-assembled suit, half pissed that Loki doesn't have the good graces to at least pass out. But the god rises fluidly, if slowly, and the blood is already drying on his face. He shakes the remnants of the prototype repulsor from his arm and flexes his fingers. He gives Tony a slow, wicked, hungry grin.

And he vanishes.

It takes Tony twenty minutes to extract himself from the half-assembled suit. When he's finally free, he leaves it standing there in his lab, a great metal chrysalis from which something bigger has emerged.


	2. Chapter 2

It's three days before Tony lets himself sleep again. He spends most of his time revamping his security measures and trying to figure out how the hell Loki sidestepped them so effectively. Because nothing had been changed, altered, tampered with. It's as if Loki slid in between the frames of camera footage and conducted everything in stop-motion.

But on the third night Tony's body betrays him and he slides into sleep slumped on a couch in the living room by his bedroom, a glass of Scotch and Redbull on the table and a tablet in hand.

This time, he wakes to a gentle pressure against his neck at the pulse point. He slams his shoulder up and sideways and hears a grunt. Then he's up and on the couch, watching Loki give his head a sharp shake. Tony launches himself at the god, knocking him to the floor. He plants a knee on Loki's windpipe and presses down hard.

Hands ghost up his sides, gentle and light. Tony almost jumps at the intimacy of it but keeps his body still. He has no doubts that Loki would take advantage of any shift of his weight. As it is, the god seems irritatingly unperturbed at his interrupted airflow. The hands—Loki's hands—crest Tony's shoulders and spill down his arms, moving faster now, towards his hands. Tony twitches reflexively and the fingers—long, elegant fingers; he remembers how they danced over his arc reactor—tighten. Tony gets the feeling that if he'd yanked his hands away completely, he'd be left with nothing more than shattered metatarsals.

Loki's left hand stays on Tony's forearm, a warning, while his right slides all the way down to Tony's fingers. He lifts them slightly and Loki's hand slips under his. The god guides Tony's hand to his face and places it against his cheek. His bright green eyes—shining and full of something Tony can't quite identify; but it's familiar—close and he sighs.

Tony feels the body beneath him sag into the floor as Loki lets out a broken, keening sound. The god's cheekbones are sharp and prominent and Tony can feel his hand bending to cup them, fingers pressing into the hollows of Loki's cheek as his thumb traces lightly across the god's jaw. He doesn't know how much of this is instinct on his part, how much curiosity, and how much sheer awe at the unbrokenness of Loki, all the smooth lines of his face, the alabaster skin, the topography of bone and muscle a landscape of something Tony thinks he can identify as pain.

"Man of Iron," Loki intones, and his voice is low and gruff and full to bursting, "Anthony Stark. Of all the mortals, you are the most similar to the Aesir."

Tony's eyebrows race each other towards his hairline. He wonders if it counts as a god complex if it was given to him by a god in the first place. Below him, Loki grins wide and sharp and languid, and if his entire person wasn't made of anger and knives Tony would swear that he nuzzles Tony's palm. Then he kisses each of Tony's fingertips and there is no amount of denial or rationalization on Tony's part that can erase that.

"You have championed for me against those who would wish to steal and punish me and you have aided me in my plans. You offered me kindness where others have offered only death."

Loki's eyes are open again, sharp as cut glass and staring right into Tony. "I owe you a debt, Anthony Stark, and I would reward you for your efforts." He picks up Tony's hand and sucks his pointer finger into his mouth.

Tony feels something wrench inside of him, feels something break. There's fire in his veins and rage at being played because goddamnit if he _hadn't_ helped Loki by taking him away from Thor, because then Loki had been taken onto the Helicarrier and he'd broken all of them and _killed Phil Coulson_ and Asgardians were fucking _gods_ and could have easily stopped one mind-jacked scientist. And that _tongue_ that weaves such pretty lies and such smooth confidence is dancing around the pad of his finger and then there's pain, warm pain as Loki bites down and works his jaw so that Tony feels his phalanges grind together.

He groans and there goes Loki's grin again, slicing around Tony's finger as he drops it and Tony's knee comes off his neck as he crashes down to bite desperately at those thin, red, lying lips which close, tight and sharp, on his and with the working of their mouths Loki's tugging that broken thing out of Tony's chest and out his throat.

Then he's standing and tugging Loki with him by the hair and Loki's making a darker, hungrier version of that keen and Tony sucks on his collarbone—when did Loki have enough skin showing to let Tony suck on his collarbone?—and then he bites it hard enough to bleed and there's a palm on his cock—there's a _palm_ on his _cock_—and everything is fire and friction and _yes_.

Loki is making sounds that are no less than sin given voice and Tony shoves him away and turns so Loki's back is against the couch and Tony's hands are on his shoulders, half pushing, half steadying as he bends Loki backwards. The god curls over the couch, his torso one long, smooth line up to his shoulders, which he's scrunched under him so he can stare up at Tony, face feral and dark over a shadow of blood welling from Tony's bite.

They're naked now, and that makes Tony hesitate.

"Claim me as your prize," Loki tells him, spreading his legs wide over the back of the couch as he levers his torso up with one hand and runs the other slowly down the length of his cock.

Tony spits on his fingers.

When he enters Loki, it's with two digits spread wide and scissoring and Loki hisses at the friction and the burn. But his eyes are a challenge and Tony slicks his dick and _rams_.

There is tightness and heat and something like ice and Loki clenches around him and Tony starts to move. He pushes and Loki pushes back. He forces and Loki takes and takes and takes. He talks and Loki talks louder, in shorter and shorter bursts, and when Tony pulls out for a moment he _whines_ until Tony rolls him over and jams himself back in and reaches around to grip Loki's cock tight, one thumb pressed hard on the head.

As he thrusts, he can feel Loki's dick sliding across the seam in the back of the couch and it must be rubbing almost raw because Tony's hand is starting to sting and he notices that Loki's pressing into it, arching against Tony and his hand and anything he can touch, and so Tony leans as far forward as he can and bites between Loki's shoulder blades and Loki yowls.

His legs are spread wide and he's thrusting as hard as he can while Tony has him pinned to the couch and he's started a mantra in some language that sounds ancient and the words are rough and beautiful and they scrape smoothly up Tony's cock to the base and settle in his balls and he changes his angle and ruts _faster_ because suddenly everything is searing white and Loki's pulsing around him and Tony's pulsing in Loki and it's on instinct that he gives two rough tugs to Loki's cock and the god screams and shakes apart and then it's slow, small movements and Tony slides out as Loki turns over and licks himself off of Tony's cock and there are no lips but teeth on teeth as they both slip up to standing.

And then Loki is gone again and Tony is alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony doesn't say anything when New York starts flooding with Asgardians because Loki has escaped from their custody. He doesn't say anything when he's called back to SHIELD for a briefing except to use some of the nicknames he's been storing up for his teammates and Fury, and he doesn't say anything over the comms when he's out on patrol one day—because someone had the genius (read: idiotic) idea to have superheroes canvas New York City for a fucking _magician_ because obviously Loki would never want to visit anywhere else—and he sees, improbably, inconceivably, but undeniably, a tall, dark figure standing defiant on a rooftop below him. Instead, he goes dark to the rest of the team and dives toward the rooftop and lands less than a foot from Loki. The god doesn't flinch, and Tony's still rankled by that.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demands, helmet still up. But Loki lifts it off like it isn't attached by hydraulics and metal joints and tosses it aside and kisses him deep and warm and hard. Tony brings his arms up like he's embracing the god but it's two repulsor blasts to the chest and Loki skitters back across the roof like a spider blown from its web, all long, thin, black limbs and sharp angles.

"That shit in my living room," Tony continues. He's advancing on Loki, who's huddled himself together, halfway to standing. He's a ball that could explode any of a hundred ways and Tony should probably be much more afraid of him than he is. "That wasn't about you owing me a debt. That was about you. That was all about you. And so was the shit in my lab. My fucking _lab_." He's right up in Loki's face now, and he's got both palm repulsors and whole batteries of shoulder missiles aimed right at the little liar's face. "You need to figure out your self-esteem issues somewhere else, or I swear to whatever deity you worship I will end you."

Of everything Tony's said, this makes Loki laugh. He doesn't uncurl and he doesn't smile, but there's something in his eyes that might almost be kindness or empathy. "You can't end me, Anthony Stark. You and your metal suit are powerless." And he gestures again and Tony feels every joint of the suit lock. The hum of charging repulsors dies.

"Fucker." Tony slaps Loki across the face; it takes _effort_ and it's slow but Loki lets it happen and when he turns his face back to Tony's there's that grin again, brushing right up against a bright red welt.

"You're powerless," Loki continues like nothing interrupted him, "And yet you continue to fight. You're blind, Anthony. You ignore the world, and in doing so, you shape it. Others of your measly race can't bear to look at infinity. You stare through it as if it is nothing more than mist."

"What is this, Introduction to Norse Psychology? I will say it again, Laufeyson, enter my house _one_ more time and I will _end _you."

He wants to punch and kick but he's stuck in his armor and all he has are words and then not even those as Loki stands and kisses him again.

"You _fought_ for me, Anthony Stark. You defended me. You _wanted_ me."

He kisses Tony after each sentence, each kiss longer and softer than the last, and Tony has to stand there and take it, has to feel the warm, pliant desperateness and sadness that press against his teeth with each touch of Loki's lips to his own. He swallows it all down and tastes it when he breathes and remembers the nights he's spent tinkering with the armor and the arc reactor and knowing that it was his own brashness and recklessness and impulsiveness that he was arming himself against as much as it was any outside threat. He is a tiny man who put himself in a tin suit and pretended he could fly and he knows Pepper stayed around at least as much out of pity as she did out of compassion or friendship or love. He knows what it is to want to look at someone and not see fear or disappointment.

"You are honest, Anthony Stark. And I thank you for that."

And for a third time, Tony's left alone.

He explains his lack of communication as a technical problem with his suit. It's easy for the others to buy because even Thor can understand the dangling wires at the base of his headpiece. He takes himself back to his workshop in the tower and the team goes to a debrief that he resolutely ignores.

That night, he's up in the penthouse, sipping scotch and staring out at the reflection of the skyline in his recently-replaced window. Then there's a blur in the glass and a set of white knuckles rap softly against the windowpane.

Tony lets him in. He offers him a drink.

Loki accepts.


End file.
